Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan
,
Lord of the Apes
(Hudson);
Miracles
(Kouf)

1985

Baby
(Norton)

1987

No Way Out
(Donaldson);
White Water Summer
(Bleckner)

Films as Focus Puller:

1960

The Singer Not the Song
(Baker)

1961

Whistle Down the Wind
(Forbes)

Publications

By ALCOTT: article—

American Cinematographer
(Hollywood), vol. 6, no. 3, March 1985.

On ALCOTT: articles—

American Cinematographer
(Hollywood), vol. 57, no. 3, March 1976.

Obituary, in
Variety
(New York), 6 August 1986.

American Cinematographer
(Hollywood), vol. 68, no. 3, March 1987.

* * *

By the time of his tragically premature death in 1986, John Alcott had
established himself as one of the world's leading directors of
photography. In particular, his association with director Stanley Kubrick
had put him at the forefront of technical and aesthetic developments in
his field.

The son of Arthur Alcott, production controller at Gainsborough Studios
throughout the 1940s, John Alcott began his movie career in the lowly
position of clapper boy. After working as a focus puller on various films
in the 1950s and 1960s (including Roy Baker's
The Singer Not the Song
and Bryan Forbes'
Whistle Down the Wind
), his big break came in the mid-sixties with his first film for Kubrick,
2001:
A Space Odyssey
. When that landmark film's original director of photography,
Geoffrey Unsworth had to leave the project half-way through its two-year
shooting schedule because of other commitments, Alcott, who had been his
assistant, stepped ably into his shoes.

By all reports a modest and self-effacing man, Alcott preferred lighting
that appeared natural and which did not draw attention to itself. As he
himself put it, "It is possible then to emphasize colours more, on
the streets and on the set." It was his work with Kubrick that gave
Alcott the best opportunity to develop his ideas about
"natural" lighting. One can indicate as examples of his
skill the now famous scenes from
Barry Lyndon
which were shot entirely by candlelight. This was an idea that Kubrick
and Alcott had discussed as far back as
2001
(it had originally been intended for Kubrick's abortive
Napoleon
project), but it was only in the 1970s that lens technology finally
caught up with the imagination of these two great filmmakers. Similarly,
in
The Shining
Alcott chose to light the elaborate hotel sets almost entirely with
"practicals" (that is, sources of lighting which are visible
on screen as an integral part of the set; e.g. chandeliers and other light
fixtures).

Alcott also of course produced distinguished work with other directors.
His numerous projects included a glossy comedy-romance (
Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?
), a Tarzan movie (
Greystoke
), thrillers (
No Way Out
,
Vice Squad
) and fantasies (
Baby
,
The Beastmaster
). Some of these films were better than others, but Alcott nearly always
contributed something distinctive, even to the least interesting of films.
A good example of this occurs in the generally undistinguished low-budget
horror production
Terror Train
. At one point near the beginning of this film a group of masked
party-goers board a train in the middle of the night. The scene is
genuinely eerie (unlike the rest of the film), with its strange, dreamlike
quality arising almost entirely from Alcott's lighting.

Alcott was one of a number of important behind-the-scenes figures in
cinema whose input into various films often goes unheeded by critics and
the public. The meticulousness of his work, as well as his complete lack
of pretentiousness and his willingness to become involved in a wide range
of projects (including some very unlikely ones) marked him out as one of
cinema's great artist-technicians, someone who through his ability
to push back the boundaries of what was technically possible and then
think through some of the aesthetic consequences of this contributed to
the development of film as an art form.

—Peter Hutchings

User Contributions:

Comment about this article, ask questions, or add new information about this topic: